Climate technology firm Levidian has launched its second-generation LOOP technology, which it claims will unlock industrial levels of high-quality graphene production for the first time.
Levidian’s LOOP system is said to provide heavy emitters and hard-to-abate industries such as landfill, aluminium producers, or concrete manufacturers with a route to both decarbonise their processes, and open up new revenue streams from the graphene and hydrogen that is produced.
This, the company says, unlocks decarbonisation projects that might not otherwise happen due to cost.
At the heart of LOOP is a patented ‘nozzle’ where microwave energy is applied to crack methane into its component parts, creating clean hydrogen and capturing carbon in the form of high purity graphene.
A single nozzle is said to be capable of producing around 15 tonnes of graphene a year – enough, for example, to transform the performance of thousands of electric vehicles with graphene-enhanced batteries and tyres so that cars can go further for longer with less impact on the environment.
John Hartley, chief executive of Levidian, said: “We believe that graphene is going to play a central role in helping the world’s most carbon intensive businesses to decarbonise, solving the business case on decarbonisation projects thanks to its short return on investment, and delivering performance improvements on just about every product it touches.
“With this latest technology release, we’re setting graphene on a pathway to the mainstream, putting all the old issues of quality and scale aside to deliver unparalleled levels of graphene production that is less carbon intensive, more affordable and a higher quality than anything else on the market today.”
The company is targeting annual production of over 50,000 tonnes of graphene by 2030 from a network of LOOP devices that will make Levidian one of the largest producers of graphene in the world, while driving down the emission of around three million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.
Levidian already has 10 LOOPs deployed or under construction globally, including a pioneering biogas to hydrogen pilot at United Utilities’ Manchester Bioresources Centre, which is supported by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Hydrogen BECCS Innovation Programme.
Unlike other graphene production techniques, which typically start with environmentally harmful mining for graphite, Levidian cracks methane into hydrogen and carbon using a patented plasma process.
The low temperature, low pressure LOOP process is said to be highly efficient, and requires neither catalyst nor water, producing no additional carbon dioxide.
Carbon capture
The carbon is captured in the form of high-quality graphene which can improve the quality of products as wide-ranging as thermoplastics, batteries and solar panels. The company also has a dedicated team of scientists who can tailor and functionalise the material to help customers integrate graphene into their existing processes and products to drive critical improvements in performance and carbon footprint.
Alistair Donaldson, the company’s chief technology officer, said: “We’re unlocking a future for graphene that has been 20 years in the making. Over the last year, our team has been relentlessly focused on driving forward the design of the nozzle, delivering a 20x uplift in gas processing and graphene production, and finding opportunities to scale our technology alongside growing customer demand.
“But we know it’s not enough to just make graphene. We‘re opening up this super-material as a viable solution to industrial decarbonisation, addressing the concerns of major global industries who have been put off in the past, and giving them access to the world’s leading experts in graphene to help them secure performance improvements that will set them apart from the competition.”
An industrial scale unit has been installed at Levidian’s Cambridge headquarters. The company plans to deploy its first industrial LOOP at a customer site in partnership with clean hydrogen developer Hexla next year.
Main image: Levidian’s Gen2 team, Andrew Tanner and Konstantinos Papangelis
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